Espn Grill, Coming To Disney, Hopes Club's Popularity Rubs Off

TOURISM & TRAVEL - ATTRACTIONS

The birth of the ESPN Grill doesn't mean the death of the ESPN Club, Disney officials said.

The club opened last year at Disney's BoardWalk, while the grill is a national restaurant, bar and sports chain to launch next year.

Although the grill is not based on the club, watching the club's performance during the past year gave grill developers ESPN and Disney Regional Entertainment Inc. faith in their new venture, said Art Levitt, president of Disney Regional Entertainment.

''The incredible success of the club has given us a lot of confidence in our concept,'' Levitt said, adding that when a Central Florida ESPN Grill opens, ''the success of both of these will rub off on each other.''

Levitt said the grill should be a hit not just with tourists but also locals. He predicts customers will head to the second-floor sky box to watch a game on a 16-foot screen while keeping track of more than 25 additional games on more than surrounding 200 monitors.

The first ESPN Grill is to open next summer in Baltimore, with a second to open in Chicago in 1999. After that, three to five new locations will open each year for several years, Levitt said.

What's on Epcot's Horizons

Company officials remain mum about the future of the long-sponsorless Horizons pavilion at Epcot, but the long-term prognosis for the attraction doesn't look good.

Horizons, a display of future habitats in space and in the desert, closed in 1994 after General Electric Co. decided to drop its sponsorship of 10 years.

It reopened the following year when the World of Motion closed to make way for Test Track, now under construction. But insiders say that decision doesn't reflect support for the attraction as much as the need to distribute visitors among as many pavilions as possible to keep lines manageable.

Company officials say it is likely, but not yet certain, that Horizons will close for good when Test Track opens and will be replaced with a space pavilion.

Although Horizons remains open, it doesn't have much of a presence on attraction maps handed out to visitors in the park. In the current park brochure, each pavilion in Future World and World Showcase is listed along with a catalog of attractions, shops and restaurants inside.

The Horizons entry, however, is a single word: ''Horizons.''

Oktoberfest at Disney

The usually closed-to-the-public Shades of Green resort at Walt Disney World will open its doors this week for its second annual re-creation of Germany's Oktoberfest celebration.

The event, to begin at 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, will feature German food, beer and music. Tickets to the event, which do not include food or drinks, cost $5 per adult and are free to anyone younger than 18.

Shades of Green is the Army's only Armed Forces Recreation Center in the continental United States - the others are in Hawaii, Germany and Korea. The centers are intended to provide affordable vacations to military personnel.

Universal props on display

Universal Studios' movie displays - with props from such films as Lost World, Apollo 13 and The Flintstones - have long been popular at the park, but they've been up only intermittently.

Not anymore.

Universal has added a permanent attraction, ''Production Center at Stage 54,'' to house props, sets and special effects from the company's current films and television shows.

In the past, movie exhibits were put in Sound Stage 22, but they couldn't be there too long because the space often is used for filming movies and television shows.

In Stage 54, however, exhibits won't be subject to those constraints. New movies and shows will come and go every few weeks or months.

The first such exhibit will be based on House of Frankenstein, a four-hour television miniseries produced by Universal Television to air on NBC next month.

Stage 54 used to house the MCA Recording Studios, where visitors could sing along with recordings of their favorite songs and buy a cassette or video of their performance.

Briefly . . .

With details about Mulan, Disney's next animated release, still under wraps, the animation tour at Disney-MGM Studios has added a large Mulan section including story boards, background sketches, elaborate models of the main characters and a short introductory video. . . .

Mel Bilbo, a 30-year veteran of theme park management and marketing, has been appointed president of Disney Quest. Bilbo spent the past 15 years with Busch Entertainment Corp. and most recently oversaw operations of all nine Anheuser-Busch theme parks. The first Disney Quest, a new chain of indoor virtual-reality theme parks developed by Disney Regional Entertainment, is to open at Downtown Disney next summer. . . .

Universal has picked Jo Rzymowska as its first European sales and marketing director. Rzymowska will be responsible for dealing with travel agents, tour operators and wholesalers throughout Europe. Rzymowska comes to Universal from Walt Disney Attractions.